Cute Mouse Necklace Tutorial

**Please Note:This tutorial assumes you’ve made jewelry before. If you need help learning how to use crimp beads, jump rings, or jewelry tools, I highly recommend checking videos on YouTube! 🙂

A few weeks back my boss’ boss asked me to create a Minnie Mouse jewelry set for his daughter, who had requested I draw up a Minnie Mouse picture for her. I don’t have an image of the picture I drew, unfortunately, which turned out surprisingly well, but I do have something awesome: A Minnie Mouse necklace tutorial! Weee!

First off, the supplies:

polymer clay ( in this case, I used Sculpey in pink, black, and a magenta)

beading wire

beads

beading notions (jump rings, crimp beads, lobster claw clasp)

jewelry tools (needle nose pliers, round nose pliers)

Step one: Using black clay, roll in to 2 balls, one about half the size of the other. Take the smaller ball & split that in half, then roll those halves in to balls for a total of one large ball for the head & two smaller ones for ears.

Step Two: Press down to flatten both ears. Using your fingernail or tools to scratch lightly on to the head where the ears will attach & to the bottom of the ears that will attach to the head, then attach, making sure to smooth out the lines so it looks like one piece.

Step Three: Let’s create the super cute hair bow & attach it to the head the same way we attached the ears!! Here’s how we make the bow:

1. Mix the colours you want for the bow, then split that ball in half. Take half, roll in to ball shape.

2. Press down on ball to make a slightly flattened circle.

3. Using a fingernail or tool, split the circle to make a Pacman shape.

4. Using fingers, press to make triangular shape for first bow. Repeat with 2nd ball.

5. Using a smaller bit of clay, make small rectangular piece for center of bow, pressing on to the top of both sides of bow in the center.

6. Affix to head piece.

You should have something similar to these, though I did a little extra for more detailed bows — feel free to experiment!!

Step Four: Lay out the pattern of how you want your necklace to look (it’s easier when you use a tray made for laying out designs, like the one below, but you can use anything, really!) In this case, my boss’ daughter’s favourite colours were pink & purple. I wanted her to be able to wear this for many years to come, so I attempted to keep it classy, yet still pretty & cute, so that even once she out grew her favourite mouse (if ever!) she could wear this set without feeling kiddy. 😉

Step Five: After you have it all laid out, start stringing the beads on to your beading wire. I chose wire instead of elastic, because I wanted this sucker to be stronger, plus once she’s older it can sometimes feel less classy to wear elastic necklaces. :\

Step Six: After you’ve completed stringing all your beads on to the wire (not forgetting the cute mouse head!), use crimp beads to attach the jump rings & attach the lobster claw to the jump rings. After that, you have a fancy 100% unique necklace!! 😀

Ta-daaa!! 😀 What do y’all think? You could even skip the bows & do just a mouse head! This was the second time I’ve created a custom mouse necklace — this time I used a thin coat of enamel spray for the head, but in this alternate version below, I used a thick glossy coat on the heads for both the necklace & matching earrings.